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Standing up against budget cuts

Jerald Reodica takes a look at the stakes in Tuesday's special election in California, and what workers and students are doing to oppose Schwarzenegger's attacks. May 18

San Francisco, CA — On May 14, students, faculty, and staff of San Francisco State University (SFSU) protested against continuing budget cuts as CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was "sounding the budget alarm, again" as one local newscaster put it.

At a press conference in the Capitol on May 14th, Schwarzenegger unveiled plans to close a huge budget deficit with deeper cuts in education and health programs not to mention borrowing from Wall Street to the tune of $6 billion in short-term loans. In threatening even greater cuts if Propositions 1A - 1F lose on Tuesday the 19th, Schwarzenegger is attempting to straightjacket the CA budget process for future generations.

Here is an easy break down of six propositions on CA May 19th Special Elections courtesy of the League of Young Voters.

  • Prop 1A • Cap California’s Budget Places a long term cap on all state budgets and services while giving the Governor more power to unilaterally cut programs.
  • Prop 1B • Buy Off the Teachers
    Makes the legislature pay back some of the billions of dollars it stole from education, but not until 2011 and only if 1A passes.
  • Prop 1C • Payday Loan from the Lottery
    Borrows $5 billion from future lottery earnings, to be repaid over the next 20-30 years and spends more money on advertising instead of education which was the original intention.
  • Prop 1D • Takes $1.64 billion from the First 5 program which provides health services for kids under 5, over the next 5 years all under the guise of "protecting children’s services."
  • Prop 1E • Takes money from Mental Health Services Act. So less money for mental health means spending more money on emergency room and prison costs in the long run.
  • Prop 1F • Threatens to withhold raises from politicians when the budget is late, which does not address real budget reform that deals with the unintended consequences of CA propositions passed in 1933 (Prop 1), 1962 (Prop 16), 1978 (Prop 13), and 1996 (Prop 218).

Even if these propositions were to pass, the state would still be in a $15.4 billion deficit. Down from $21.3 billion deficit if they were to fail. Whatever the results of the May 19th Special Election, the CA state government has already delivered 5,000 layoff notices to state employees while earlier this year, the Democratic-controlled Senate and Assembly passed a budget containing $15 billion in education spending cuts and $12 billion in new regressive taxes.

Schwarzenegger’s administration also threatens to release thousands of undocumented immigrants to federal officials for deportation, while low-level offenders would end up in county jails rather than state prisons. The governor also wants to sell large state properties, including San Quentin state prison in Marin County and the Cow Palace in Daly City.

"I understand these cuts are very painful and affect real lives," Schwarzenegger said. "But this is the harsh reality and the crisis that we face."

Of course, wealthier Californians don’t encounter the "harsh reality" regular workers face as the recession deepens, further spiraling the world's wealthiest nation into an ongoing cycle of despair that has already seen millions of jobs and trillions of dollars lost.

In particular, the California State University (CSU) administration has dramatically diminished the quality of education within the system. In addition to increasing class sizes, reducing the availability of classes, delaying graduations, laying off faculty and staff, and the denying 10,000 freshmen to the CSU, last Wednesday, May 13th, the CSU Board of Trustees raised the yearly undergraduate fees to $3,354. This fee is in addition to other fees set by each campus.

At SFSU, this amounts to $714. So over the past 10 years, fees have more than doubled where in the 1999-2000 school year a full time SFSU student paid just $1,428 in university fees.

Less than a week before this decision by the CSU Board of Trustees, the University of California's governing Board of Regents decided to raise tuition by 9.3 percent - the sixth increase in seven years. And at the same meeting, the UC Regents approved the appointment of Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann as chancellor of UC San Francisco and Linda Katehi as chancellor of UC Davis. It should be noted that these administrators were appointed with double-digit increase in salaries, 12 percent and 27 percent respectively, over their predecessors.

While these bureaucrats earn yearly salaries and housing and car perks amounting to half a million dollar, Sean Tanner’s life has been put on hold because of the budget cuts. At the May 14th demonstration titled, "S.O.S. The CSU is Under Water!" the senior at SFSU stepped up to the bullhorn to tell it like it is.

"Look here. My problem is that I only need two classes to graduate, statistics and research, and damn near for the last whole year, every damn semester the classes are full. They know that seniors need that class to graduate. And it seems like a trap to keep us hear and waste our time… It's not a waste of time to go to other classes, but the purpose is to get your degree and continue with your life. So I don’t understand why when there’s such a demand for the classes they just don’t offer it."

The lecturers at SFSU are wondering this themselves as administrators plan for next school year’s layoffs. So it isn't the case that there aren’t students who want to be taught or that there aren’t teachers to instruct, it is that administrators and career politicians have placed public higher education on the chopping block.

One of the main organizers of the demonstration, Sheila Tully, a lecturer in Anthropology, said it best at the rally at the top of campus by Highway 1 - a busy thoroughfare of San Francisco.

"We are educators and we know that public education is under attack. Students are paying more and getting less. I am also member of the Executive Board of the California Faculty Association (CFA) representing lecturers. We are losing our work. Some of us have been here 12 and 15 years and have been told that we have no classes to teach. If we don’t teach our courses, students don’t get the GE [General Education] courses, they need to graduate. We all know this and we don’t understand why this is lost on the Board of Trustees. We need to say to the Governor that this is unacceptable and that he needs to funds public education and that 1A is not going to solve the problem. 1A is going to lock us into this desperate budget we’ve been in where we have to deal with these continual cuts."

The CFA organized the rally to call attention to the CSU Board of Trustees vote to raise student fees and the May 19th Special Election. Appearing in bright orange life preservers, inner tubes, raincoats, and swimming trunks, protesters held signs that read: "It’s Raining Budget Cuts: No on Prop 1A", "More Classes: Less Fees" "Stop Cuts to CSU", "Mayday! Mayday! Protect Public Higher Education", "S.O.S. Save Our Students", and "Tax the Rich."

As an advisor from the School of Ethnics Studies indicates, "We need people with vision in Sacramento – new priorities. Students of color are not able to afford education and having to drop out and enter dead end jobs."

While this advisor is right, even people with degrees are ending up in lower paid jobs. Also in solidarity at the rally, graduating senior in Social Work, Makda G., got one such low wage job lined up after graduation in a bread bakery. However, she is still pressed to find a better paid job since she has to start paying off her school loans in six months. Loans that have accrued after five years of barely getting into classes she needed.

Another participant of the rally, Tabrela W., will have to throw in some extra shifts at work to be able to afford going to school and pay off her credit card debt from buying textbooks. On top of this, Tabrela didn’t get into a required English class for every sophomore which will cost her an extra semester (since this class is a prerequisite for upper division classes).

Sean, Sheila, Makda, and Tabrela are living the "harsh reality" so removed from the lives led by politicians like Schwarzenegger and bureaucrats like SFSU President Robert Corrigan.

But as the advisor of the College of Ethnic Studies – a school won through struggle and solidarity, through students and faculty going on strike together – suggests, "change is not going to come from politicians- students and teachers need a broader vision and get active."